so it went to the right place, to where bugs were posted and not to the user to user forums, where people were talking about it, where people where asking about it and where the Adobe feedback would have been really appreciated.

I'm replying to say that I'm experiencing much of the same slowdown that everyone else is experiencing. I've noticed a few things:

1. If I pull up the Windows task manager to see my CPU usage, I can see that just moving the mouse over Lightroom causes my CPU to spike between 50% and 80%. This could be causing a lot of the problems with the sliders, since I'm trying to use the mouse to adjust the sliders at the same time that Lightroom is trying to calculate the changes.

2. I use a mouse/keyboard sharing program called "Mouse Without Borders" from Microsoft labs. It lets me use a single keyboard/mouse for two computers. With this program running my CPU spike is higher than without it running.

4. Opening a new catalog rather than my converted Lightroom 1 --> 2 --> 3 --> 4 catalog helped bring down the maximum CPU usage a bit. I am still hoping to be able to use my existing Lightroom catalog.

5. I have an NVidia graphic card. I used the following NVidia control panel 3D settings, which helped bring down the maximum CPU usage a bit. These same settings made Lightroom 3 brushes work. Without these settings I could barely brush on any effect:

Anisotropic filtering: OFF

Antialiasing - Gamma correction: OFF

Antialiasing - Mode: Override any application setting

Antialiasing - Setting: 2x (2xMS)

Antialiasing - Transparency: Off

Buffer-flipping mode: Use block transfer

CUDA - GPUs: All

Enable overlay: Off

Exported pixel types: Color indexed overlays

Maximum pre-rendered frames: 3

Multi-display/mixed-GPU acceleration: Compatibility performance mode

OpenGL Rendering GPU: Quadro FX 2700M

Power management mode: Prefer maximum performance

Threaded optimization: Auto

Triple buffering: Off

Texture filtering - Anisotropic filter optimize: Off

Texture filtering - Anisotropic sample op: Off

Texture filtering - Negative LOD bias: Allow

Vertical sync: Force on

That said, I have returned some performance to my machine, but Lightroom is still highly unusable. Where I used to be able to process a few hundred photos in an hour, it now takes hours to process 30 or 40, just because the response in the program is so unbearably slow.

I hope this information helps shed some light on the problems. Can anyone else confirm that their CPU spikes just moving the mouse across the application? Not even pressing buttons or trying to do anything. Just move.

For those with slider problems, widening the right panel by clicking on its left edge and dragging it to the left may help a bit by lengthening the slider lines (whatever their proper names are).

For those who have sluggish behavior overall, for example taking 10+ secs to generate a preview in the Library module, deleting and then regenerating your standard previews may work wonders. Please, please. Someone be the guinea pig and try it.

There is no doubt - Lightroom 4 IS slow on any hardware configuration, much slower when comparing to Lightroom 3.x. I doesn't matter how beefy the machine is (my is i7 with 8 CPUs and 16GB of RAM) which made the previous version fligh. I descovered another bug: syncing of keywords does NOT work. (and I did not test the rest of the fields). I believe that the product was rush to the market, and was not tested sufficiently. Not impressed with Adobe on this

While I haven't been *as* troubled by the slowness issues reported, I did see them a lot in the beta where the system would just slow down to a crawl when trying to make simple Develop Module adjustments.

That being said, I DO notice a delay when making some changes with some adjustment brushes. Up to a second or more sometimes. When I use the Tint brush and change the Tint on the slider, I have to wait about a second for the changes to propogate up into the image. This is not tolerable.

I currently have an i7-2600K with 8GB of memory, a SSD drive for the LR4 cache and a seperate drive for the actual catalog and RAW files being used, so it's certainly NOT a harware issue as so many have pointed out.

Adobe needs to investigate this problem now. This should be the TOP priority for the development team, nothing else. I've seen the list of issues they have on their developers forum and they are all issues that need to be solved, but not nearly as serious as this one. Adobe engineers should be working AROUND the CLOCK on this one, period. Everything else should be on the backburner until then.

Another issue is that Adobe has NOT SAID ANYTHING about this problem to this community. That, in and of itself, is a problem--almost worse than the actual problem. A simple report of their progress thus far would suffice. I'm a senior software engineer, and if my team let a problem like this go for so long without any acknowledgement whatsoever, our heads would be on a platter with our company.

I think this is a general proble with adobe. Each new version is much slower than before. LR3 is much slower than LR2. Sounds like LR4 is going to be slower than LR3. Each new version of acrobat is much slower than the previous one. The same seems to be true for illustrator and photoshop. It seems that adobe for some reason is unable to make new versions of their software as fast (or ideally faster) than the previous one. This practice was acceptable in the 1990s (when single threaded performance was increasing exponentially) but since around 2003 this has no longer been the case, and it is critical to optimize single threaded performance and user interface latencies. Adobe for some reason doesn't consider this a priority I think.

I just installed LR4 and am appalled at how slow the Library module is when sequentially stepping through photos. At 1:2 zoom, it takes 3.3 seconds to change and render the next photo. This is on a overclocked quad-proc, hyperthreaded i7-860 @ 3.8 Ghz with 8GB RAM, catalog on a 10k rpm SATA drive and photos on a RAID 0 array. 64-bit Windows 7. GPU = nVidia GeForce GTX-275, 896MB, driver = 8.17.12.9053 (290.53).

This is not a fringe, esoteric operation. You click once to magnify, then hit the right arrow key for next. In UI parlance it is a "common user path". How could Lightroom testers or program managers sign off on something like this?

LR3 was much faster. Is there any rational explation for this, or installation/config error which explains it?

I haven't had major problems with sliders in the Develop module, but LR4 in general feels sluggish and Library browsing is intolerably slow. I see the "Loading..." message so often it's essentially a logo.

I just installed LR4 and am appalled at how slow the Library module is when sequentially stepping through photos. At 1:2 zoom, it takes 3.3 seconds to change and render the next photo. This is on a overclocked quad-proc, hyperthreaded i7-860 @ 3.8 Ghz with 8GB RAM, catalog on a 10k rpm SATA drive and photos on a RAID 0 array. 64-bit Windows 7. GPU = nVidia GeForce GTX-275, 896MB, driver = 8.17.12.9053 (290.53).

The problem you describe is exactly what I saw after the LR2-LR3 upgrade. I fixed it by deleting and then regenerating my previews.

Try this: delete the contents of your previews folder in the Lightroom folder, then in LR4 select "all photographs" and then click on Library/Previews/Render Standard-Sized Previews.

This is a separate issue from the sluggish slider behavior others have reported.

Same here. Rubbish performance on my system. LR3 was very fast but LR4 is just slow and often crashes without a reason.

The overall system performance is also rubbish when i export pictures. In LR3 it was possible to run two export batches at one time without issues working in windows or surfin the web. With LR4 everything slows down. Even my cursor ist struggelin.

I just upgraded and found that when using a slider nothing happened until I clicked to enlarge the image, the the change kicked in. I mean I could wait forever, just nothing happened. I found the advice to export to a new catalogue, remove all previews and clear the cache and so far everything seems to be working ok. On a fast Windows machine.

created your standard previews on import, or just did it by selecting build

previews from the library menu, it should be much faster.

Bob Frost

Thanks, selecting build standard previews during import, or afterward via Library>Previews>RenderStandard-Sized Previews reduced the "next photo" lag from about 3.3 sec to about 0.1 sec for standard size viewing. However -- if I click magnify once (default 1:2) then next photo takes about 3.3 sec.

Building 1:1 previews makes "next photo" in 1:2 magnification take about 0.6 sec (down from 3.3 sec). At zoom-to-fit or zoom-to-fill, it's about as fast (0.1 sec) as using standard previews. So ensuring the previews are built improves browsing speed for non-magnified views from intolerable to good (at least on my hardware).

Note these are 5MB .jpg files, not gigantic images or raw files.

The free Picasa photo viewer is almost instantly fast, and requires no configuration tuning and no preview building. However Picasa Viewer cannot do prev/next when zoomed in. The 3rd-party FastPictureViewer ver 1.7 (despite the name) is also sluggish on next/prev browsing of these images. Even Photo Mechanic 4.6.8 (what many pros use) isn't always super fast doing next/prev browsing. LR4 is actually faster for non-magnified next/prev browsing. CorelAfterShot Pro 1.0.0.39 is fairly quick. FastOne 4.6 is ironically not that fast. ACDSee 14.1 is lightning fast -- the only viewer I've seen that's fast as Picasa (maybe even faster).

So several "fast" image browsers (not just LR4) aren't that fast. I fail to grasp why makers of specialize image browsing/catalogging software don't prioritize fluid, responsive, lag-free image browsing. If you're dealing with ingesting and culling thousands of images -- despite whatever else the software does -- it must be fast for next/prev browsing.

If you deal with lots of images, I'd suggest using Picasa Viewer or ACDSee as the 1st phase of image evaluation, before it even gets to LR4. That will use the fastest software on the highest volume. Then import what's left to LR4, ensuring previews are built as described above.

LR4 browsing speed for non-magnified views isn't that bad on my machine, assuming previews are built. So far I haven't see the "sluggish slider" behavior others have reported.

This is a good a time as any to remind folks that user-to-user forums are extremely self-selecting. You cannot use these, or any other user forum, to get an unbiased view of the temperature, as it were, of a specific release.

The great majority of users are not having problems described here. Adobe is looking into the clearest reports they have, and have already issued a statement that may help some people experiencing specific performance issues. I'm sure there will be more to follow.

But, the fact is that Lightroom has consistently run well on modest equipment since v.1. However, given the wide range of environments it is expected to work in, there is bound to be situations like this that show up from time to time.

Plainly put: there is no reason to not upgrade to v.4, unless there is a specific issue that you know will affect you. It is not possible to come up with an estimate of how it will work on your hardware with your dataset based on a survey of user forums. Fortunately, you can upgrade and use Lr 4 for a month and find out for yourself. The only cost is that you might have to recreate your previews if you go back to your (untouched by Lr 4) Lr 3 catalogue permanently. Since previews contain no precious information (assuming you still have your originals, which should be the case; if you don't have your originals, you probably have bigger problems to deal with) why not just blow them away and start with fresh previews in Lr 4 anyway?

I understand that user forums often become a place for people to vent, but no one should be confusing the collection of reports here as anything remotely coherent or telling in any manner. Only Adobe Support might have the hard numbers necessary to actually spot trends.

My analysis too is that the majority of people do not have serious problems (the tone curve issue asside, that was real and a workaround has been provided).

Given the complexity of programs in the last few years, and the variations in hardware (almost infinite), it is diffcult to impossible to assure that systems work on

all possible configurations, variations, versions etc.

So yes there will be some problems. You may be able to work them out yourself, or with help of others on the forums, or you may have to wait a bit for updates and information from the development group. BUT!! its no different for adobe than microsoft or any other supplier. We have had similar issues with one of our clients who has strange performance problems that no other clients have -- we don't know what it is yet, although we have a couple of things that help -- sounds much like the LR4 issues.

I have been fighting an issue with the Export module causing LR 4 to crash, and in the ptocess of trying to figure out if it was me or them, I did some experimentation, which is directly related to the concerns many have stated about LR4 performacne.

I had no problems with LR 4 performance at all. I was using the 64 Bit version, and it just worked great, and there was no impact on sstem performance, including cursor response.

When I started getting the export crashes, and couldn't get them to stop, I installed the 32 bit LR 4 as well as the 64 bit version. The irst thing I noticed was that the 32 Bit version is a terrible CPU hog, During any exports, the CPU - all 4 cores - ran at 100% for a minutes at a time, dopping occasionally to lower CPU usage. Didn't matter if I was using the jfriedl plug-ins for Photobucket and facebook, or did a Hard Drive export; the CPU Usage pattern was the same; indicating he problem was with the rendering engine as it was converting the photos from Raw to jpg files.

Just on a whim, i retried the 64 bit version - wonder of wonders - i was once again able to export with the 64 Bit version. I rechecked how it performed on the same exports. Much faster, with no major CPU hogging, no impact on cursor movement, and only occasional high CP{U usage - about one second per photo, adn then not over 80%.

Certainly, at least part of the performance imapcts I saw was from running 32 bit executables in a 64 bit environment. However, I think there may also be an issue with the 32 bit version causing excessive periods of high CPU usage.

I will continue to use the 64 bit version everywhere I can, and if the problem with theexport module reappears, i will jump over to the 32 bit version for taht function.

The great majority of users are not having problems described here. Adobe is looking into the clearest reports they have, and have already issued a statement that may help some people experiencing specific performance issues. I'm sure there will be more to follow.

I would suggest this is an unwarranted assumption on your part. Perhaps the great majority of users simply put up with the problems or just decide to ditch LR? This is the nightmare for any service related business - no feedback. I am a good example - I am having many of the performance issues after using v 1-3 without issues. I have a ton of experience with LR and have reviewed all the performance enhancement options. However, I have not commented until now, just waiting for something to happen, or revert to 3.6. I have to disable the detail panel to get any reasonable slider performance.

As Joema3 said:

I fail to grasp why makers of specialize image browsing/catalogging software don't prioritize fluid, responsive, lag-free image browsing. If you're dealing with ingesting and culling thousands of images -- despite whatever else the software does -- it must be fast for next/prev browsing.

Adobe really needs to figure this out. I would like the option to review the embedded jpg images for culling aka the import module. Problem with the import module pulling embedded jpg from a flash card just cannot keep up - although photo mechanic can...

Seems a shame to me that I prefer to use a third party image browser to cull instead of LR. When I show LR to others it is a little embarrassing to say "you just have to wait for all the previews to be built - should be done in 15-20 minutes...". Then I'll delete all the ones I imported but don't want. I usually get a raised eyebrow about then, especially from picassa or photo mechanic users.

Just installed and tried photoshop cs6 beta. i tried the new adobe camaera raw with x64 bit and hey man, this thing is FAST. compared to lr4 adobe camera raw is nearly as twice so fast than lightroom. unbelievable. for now camera raw is my preferred raw engine. amazing. can not belive they use the same engine. happy now with adobe camera raw, still very sad about lightroom.

I´m dealing with a lot of slowness and freeze up performance (if you could call it performance) in LR4...Just wonder: what are these guys doing over there at Adobe Labs? Too much Facebook for them maybe?

Because I´m trying hard to work here and make a livin out of photography.

Have said that, I have a Q6600 quad core with Nvidia GTX8800 +8gb ram and no antivirus or other program that would slow down my performance (just work computer only)...also have a raid 0 with two 7200rpm disks.

Noticed that no matter if I put pictures on external e-sata disk and import and use it from there or on my hard drive, still slow.

When I try to use with a Bamboo Connect.........just terrible!

I felt like setting my whole table on fire after trying to edit a catalog with no more than 50 pictures on it...ajusts on the sliders are imprecise as they are so slow!

I noticed a increase in my work hors more than 30% definately...

Gave away my LR3 and I´m almoast calling Adobe and returning my LR4 and using LR3 until they come up with a solution...

Maybe the price droped and quality of the programers also droped this time...

I don't use one of these but Lightroom has a long history of really really badly interfering with drivers from wacom tablets. Some people can get this to work apparently but it is all very precarious. You often have to make absolutely sure you're running the very latest drivers for the tablet.

I'm wondering something. Do the users seeing 100% spike in CPU, who have multi-core/cpu systems see the spikes in ALL of those cores/cpus or a single core/cpu? I am now wondering if this is actually a process/thread scheduling problem that show's itself only under certain conditions in LR4.

The reason I ask thiis is because I DO see a slowdown when I use the Adjustment brush with Tint (no idea why it's just this), but when this does happen, I see 1 single core spike and the rest are relatively idle, almost zero really. However, when I perform other functions, it appears that the other cores raise up slightly when I peform adjustments, but not 1 single core as in the adjustment brush case.

I would be interested to see the results of what is happening to other users when they see the slowdown: What is happening in each core/cpu (depending on your system)?

Just to throw in my own observations after having used the trial version for about 2.5 weeks now:

The library module is fine. Once the previews have been generated, everything is snappy enough.

Switching to the develop module usually takes a few seconds when it's the first time after starting up the software; but after that, it's a relatively smooth transition (although sometimes switching back to library module is a bit choppy).

In the develop module, things are generally okay, except in the following conditions: (a) heavy use of the brush tool and (b) working on high ISO images (i.e. in the range of 3200). I haven't done too, too much with the brush tool in LR4 yet, but I can say that, very reproducibly, as soon as I start working on a high ISO image, the program comes to a crawl - it's virtually unusable, and would be absolutely unusable in a situation where high productivity is needed. When I say that it comes to a crawl, I mean switching from image to image in the develop module, using pretty much any slider, zooming in and out, applying sharpening/NR, applying lens correction, using curves, etc. As soon as I switch back to a low ISO image (400 or lower), it's all good again.

In the case of all images (regardless of ISO), sharpening/NR are much, much slower than they were in LR3.6. In LR3.6, switching on and off the "details" (using the toggle switch) results in an almost instantaneous change. In the case of LR4, it generally takes a good 5 seconds or so for the effect to kick in (making it very difficult to judge the before and after).

BTW, all this was done on a fresh catalog, created in LR4. However, LR3.6 is also installed on my system, and I did have the LR4 beta on there as well (but I uninstalled this before installing the full trial version).

In terms of my system specs:

i7-950 OC'ed to ~3.4GHz; 12GB RAM (rated 1600MHz; set at 1500MHz); AMD Radeon HD6870; LR catalog and photos on caviar black 1TB; cache on a separate black caviar 1TB; LR itself installed on my C drive, which is a Vertex 2 120GB SSD; running two, sometimes three monitors (but LR only running on one, i.e. not using second or third monitor); Win7 x64

Camera specs: Canon 7D, using RAW files

To be fair, another thing to point out is that it's not as if LR3 was always problem-free for me. Especially in earlier versions, it had it's slow moments (this problem seems to have improved in more recent version of LR3); but not nearly as bad as LR4 is.

Hope this helps in terms of solving this issue, which is very significant for some.

I've exactly the same problems with LR4 performance as most of you (dual screen users).

My hardware:

AMD Phenom II X4 955 3.2 @ 3.8

16GB of 1600MHz RAM

HDD - WD20EARS couple of times ;-) (unfortunately not SSD)

GIGABYTE GT240 1GB

But there is one significant difference. As RAW (NEF) files from my D90 and D700 are rendering smoothly without any lags, RAWs from D70 (while working on dual screen ONLY) are just killing my CPU. I've 1-2s lag every 5s. It's horrible! And quite hard to explain. Any ideas maybe?

Same here, dual or single screen doesn't matter. Performance is well below of what I got in LR3. Tried hints and tips, have a "virgin" LR4 installation now with catalog created from scratch, using DNG only, no improvement.

My Core 2 extreme system with multiple cores spikes to almost 100%, hitting

all cores.

BTW, taking 100% CPU is not by itself wrong or bad. In general you want all available CPU resources used to get the job done faster. If all cores are at 100% and it's still slow, that's bad. Alternatively if it's CPU-bound (not disk or I/O-bound), slow, yet all cores are *not* being used, that's bad. It indicates available CPU assets are not being used, typically because the app is poorly multi-threaded. In that case you often see a single CPU pegged, but an aggregate CPU meter averaging all cores shows a lower percentage. In general recent upper-echelon Adobe apps use multiple threads/cores pretty well, esp. Premiere Pro/Photoshop CS5 and later. I don't know what happened to LR4.